Liberals: Obviously Not Math Majors

It has come to my attention that many of the most "fun" statistics for liberal use these days are pretty stretchy. And I don't mean the amount of money in the budget, either. Lets look through a few "progressive" ideas over the next few days and see what the numbers say.

Yes, I know it is so much more fun to have an emotional, visceral reaction to problems, but bear with me, as I have this somewhat crazy idea that Government should be based on what works, rather than what we really, truly, with sugar and spice on top wish would work.

Lets take, for today's example, urban blacks. You will see statistics one after the other about how destitute these poor souls are, how they are victimized by the police (hey, I'm not much of a fan either, just saying), endure higher prices than suburbs, crooked and racist business owners moving the jobs away to where the white folk are, and are generally the victims of heinous things perpetrated upon them by the evil, the greedy, and the hateful.

Problem seems to be, though, that the numbers just don't add up to those conclusions.

To really understand anything you first have to know that nothing happens in a vacuum, that there is a history involved in everything, and to know where things are going, you must know where things have been. You know the effect, urban poverty, and so rather than look at the history of the situation most people just lash out at what they perceive to be the "bad guys".

Do me a favor: look at the employment rates of urban dwellers in the 1930's and 40's. Now look at the 1950's; then go for the 60's, then 70's, and now today. Look at every ethnic group, family cohesion rates (families with 2 parents), income range and the violent crime stats. Now look at today. What you see is a gradual improvement up until the early 1960's, after which the situation for minorities, especially blacks, drastically worsens.

But how can that be? The 60's brought us the civil rights act, numerous laws on equality, robust unionization, the works. How can things have been better BEFORE all those wonderful things and worse AFTER? This is where history comes in handy. During the mid to late 60's all those wonderful things were done, yes, but businesses started moving out before that as crime was already gong up. A few riots thrown in for good measure and most businesses felt (reasonably) like the best way to protect their businesses was to get the hell out of Dodge.

The story the numbers tell is that prior to the unrest of the 60's, the urban minority population was experiencing a robust family life, with decent wages and relatively low crime. But leading up to the early part of that decade, the numbers waver. Not in employment on average but the crime rate and child abandonment rate. Shortly after these numbers began to rise, businesses started to move out. There were then riots in major cities, where urban blacks destroyed millions (hundreds of millions in adjusted money) of dollars of private and business property. More businesses moved for their safety. More rampant crime, more abandonment.

The problem is believed to be external, ie. businesses move so crime goes up. But in actuality the numbers don't support that story, but rather show businesses doing the smart thing to protect their assets when crime rates rise where they are located.

The truth is that the problem isn't external, but internal. The breakdown of civil society is the cause of woe, not someone foisting something upon them. Easy to prove that one too.

When you take into account not merely the "level" of education of blacks versus whites but take into account mean test scores, income is distributed in a funny way. We all know that 2 graduates are not equal just because they are graduates. Say one went to MIT and another went to Kalamazoo college. Or even if both went to MIT but one graduated top of his class with honors and another barely skirts by. So the only way to take into account these variables is to look at test averages and class placement. Here are what the data say: all thing being equal, black men get paid more than white men. Given the same basic measurement stick, black men out-earn white men by just shy of 6 percent. Huh.

What this shows, in stark numbers, is that those who choose to step out of the culture they are mired in have no greater limitations than anyone else, that those who try do, in fact, excel. The problem lay not in people holding others down but in people holding themselves down, people choosing the easy over the right, the quick payoff rather than the reward of the patient.

When the State, or a community organizer, or well meaning liberal steps in talks about "blaming the victim", the burden of proof upon them to show that there is in fact a victim of external abuses. When history and hard fact are in play- rather than platitudes and emotional reaction- it is pretty easy to say that in this case there is none. Oh, and I know some liberals will toss around that old hack about the "legacy of slavery", and I am fully prepared to throw hard data back in their smug and self serving faces.

Modern liberals have for too long held an entire people from their American birthright: to try as hard as anyone else and to go just as far. They have enslaved a people with their false promises and feel-good emotional blame games. They have given a man a fish at a time, rather that even allowing him to learn how to fish, and entire generations have been lost because of it. They have created artificial rifts in our nation by playing up non-existent problems and creating cures worse than the diseases that are in fact there. They have crushed the spirits of innumerable human beings by giving them the out: someone else is holding me down, I am a victim, I have no power, I must be taken care of, I cannot do anything on my own. They have robbed a people of true pride in themselves, the cornerstone of conservative thought, and robbed us all of the future we could have had.